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# Tracing Text Types in Biblical Hebrew

**Authors:** [Wido van Peursen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/authors/wido-van-peursen/) · **Year:** 2020 · **Venue:** Vetus Testamentum 70/1, 140–155 **Link:** [doi.org/10.1163/15685330-12341430](https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-12341430) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) (per OpenAlex) — summary only, not carried into a release

[**4** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W3002473093) openalex · 2026-10-18[**1** citations in our library](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/cited-by/hbo-2020-peursen-tracing-text-types-biblical-hebrew/) of the 140673 papers whose bibliographies we read[Vetus Testamentum](https://openalex.org/S8795719)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-12341430)
- [PDF](https://brill.com/downloadpdf/journals/vt/70/1/article-p140_10.pdf)
- [DOI 10.1163/15685330-12341430](https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-12341430)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W3002473093)

**Authors (1)**

1. [Wido van Peursen](https://openalex.org/A5016185660) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3142-5752) · h 9 · 290 citations · 204 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

The full text is not in our library (the publisher page refused the fetch); this card rests on the abstract. The article asks why Harald Weinrich's *Tempus* (1964), with its split between the "discussed" world (speech, comment) and the "narrated" world, had such a large effect on Biblical Hebrew studies (Schneider, Talstra, Niccacci and others), and whether it still holds. It traces how Weinrich's ideas entered the field and the ETCBC database Talstra began in the 1970s, follows later developments in general linguistics and in biblical studies, and then describes and evaluates a classification of Biblical Hebrew text types built on those ideas. Ideas are provisional.

## Ideas

- I1. Use the two-world split as a top-level tag on every clause: narrative (narrator's voice, wayyiqtol mainline) vs. discourse (character's speech: yiqtol, weqatal, imperative, participle). Mova already has the voice column in `prag`; measure how well verb form alone predicts it (a confusion table per book).
- I2. Add the ETCBC-style text-type label for embedded speech (narrative-in-speech, i.e. a character telling a story with wayyiqtol, vs. discursive speech) and count it in the Torah.

## For Mova

I1 is a measurement for `tools/macula/src/prag.rs` (voice vs. verb form) and a section of [Discourse: narrative, speech and the shape of a text](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/09-discourse/) on the Weinrich/Talstra model and its limits. I2 is a further `prag` column, useful for the quote-carrying rules (`carry`, `close-qatal`).

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.1163/15685330-12341430](https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-12341430)

```
@inproceedings{peursen2020tracing,
  title = {{Tracing Text Types in Biblical Hebrew}},
  author = {Peursen, Wido van},
  booktitle = {Vetus Testamentum},
  year = {2020},
  doi = {10.1163/15685330-12341430},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-12341430}
}
```

- [← previous Clause Structure Variation in Biblical Hebrew: A Quantitative Approach](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/papers/hbo-2020-naaijer-clause-structure-variation-biblical-hebrew/)
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